The Tale of the Twittering Son

Once upon a time there was a relatively doting mother who did all the cool things like using the internet, sending mails, blogging, surfing, wasting precious hours of her dwindling tale of years wandering Second Life as an absurd avatar, sending text messages, photosharing - even using facebook and Twitter. She read her children's blogs to such an extent that she was able to converse with some semblance of knowing what was going on and she tried not to phone them when they might be tired/grumpy/watching footie/cooking/eating/changing the baby. She admired their photos and sympathised when they had domestic problems like floods or leaks.

And so it was, O Best Beloved (sorry, Kipling) that one day, while updating her own Twitter status with some mundane thought, she came upon the news that one of her children was having plumbing issues for the second time in two months. The problem had been in the public domain for all of two days before she had become aware of it. Immediately she was stricken with pangs of guilt - had she been remiss in not Twittering more assiduously? - and irritation. Why had she not been personally informed? Why had her words of wisdom - for she was, after all, a Wise Woman - not been sought instantly?

But being such a Wise Woman she decided that this is the way the world goes. She who does not Twitter constantly is a failure as a mother and deserves to be ignored. And maybe, she ruminated, it was better to have electronic contact with her offspring than have them constantly at her door. After all, she might have ended up waiting in for the plumber.

BTW - there's a second new American experience poem on frankenstina